Exhibitions

Thurzo's House

Písané a tlačené na banskobystrický spôsob

(Written and printed in Banská Bystrica method)

03.03.2011 - 29.05.2011
The exhibition represents the old prints and plates for printing from the collections of the Central Museum.

Tihanyis' Manor House

Collection of the month Jnauary - February 2012:

Aurochs – a sad memory of human history.

Aurochs (Bos primigenius) is an iconic extinct, or better to say – exterminated mammal.
Bulls of this really formidable ungulate were up to 2 meters high and weight up to 1 ton. Aurochs is considered to be an ancestor of our domestic cattle. But there are also other existing breeds, whose ancestors were most probably other wild bovid species. First step of domestication occurred in 4th century B.C., in today’s Uzbekistan.
Aurochs’s horns were lyre-shaped and could grow up to 80 cm in length. Incomplete horn found in Santovka, (from collection of Central Slovakia Museum Banska Bystrica) belonged to a smaller female individual.
Aurochs was even during quite recent historic period spread almost all over the Europe. As the middle-ages civilization caused a massive deforestation, aurochs became more and more rare. Smaller populations were still present in less affected areas of Central Europe, where it became royalty’s popular game animal. The very last aurochs died in 1627 in Polish reserve Jaktorov, thus becaming Europe’s first extinct mammal in modern times.